Be A Warrior

In business, to be taken seriously, you have to take yourself seriously. It’s not easy to be in the arena with heavyweight corporations and people more experienced than you. The single tactic winning firms fundamentally use, is to punch above their weight.

Robert Kiyosaki taught that brilliantly in his book, ‘Retire Young, Retire Rich’. When David kicked Goliath’s ass, his leverage was the catapult. That made him look extraordinary. A lot of you think because of my success, I’m not an ordinary person. I love my uniqueness, but am just like everyone else. What separates me from most is that I think one step ahead, most of the time. Like I’m always playing chess. But those guys think 3 to 5 moves ahead – and that’s from the beginning. Thinking ahead makes you clever. It’s a sign of above-average intelligence. Let’s use this against a backdrop of running an online business.

Follow all steps of the previous posts and you’ll have no problems being taken seriously. Now, when it comes to competition, how do you stand out? My advice is this: use them as leverage. If the free market is such that the biggest pocket wins, then find a way into that pocket. Here’s an example. In 2010, I wanted to break into the online publishing world using my works on comics and gender inequality research. I knew the industry both offline and online is ruled by ivory towers that squash on everything below them. What did I do? I jumped on the World SummitYouth Award contest to freely promote my products and firm to a global audience, when the opportunity came. Now, I’m considered not just an elite youth e-content developer, but an expert in my niche, overall. I did all this without a marketing budget because I’m a grassroots entrepreneur who relies on free Internet marketing tools. The outcome is this: when you Google specialist listings, you get my LinkedIn profile, Twitter and blog indexed on the 1st page of at least 40 million international search results. How did I do it? I punched above my weight.

Google acknowledges expert achievements. I used the Youth Award as my platform to break into the online publishing industry. ‘Til today, they’re still my platform because they care for their winners. I used free Internet marketing tools/services and many free Google products to promote my achievement through viral marketing. That, in turn, connected me to a natural fan base whom I keep updated on my work. You are part of that community, my friend. SEO success and page rank increases are a medium to long-term strategy to deliver quality and solid marketing & traffic results. The Google search result page classifies my profiles and site with one of the biggest corporations in the world: SAAB! I think we can both agree that they’re a couple of sumos above my weight category. Where have I been clever in the process? I’ve been thinking ahead in the viral marketing aspect. I knew that by keeping the web updated on the news in my work, I would ultimately be categorized with the big time players. This is the extreme power that lies in Internet marketing tools & services: you get to do it for free! Offline, I’m yet to discover what marketing outfit can rank you amongst multinationals for free. Let me know if you find any.